California breaks record with more than 9,000 new cases in a day
The Chronicle's MALLORY MOENCH: "California recorded more than 9,000 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, a record-breaking daily count as the outbreak continues to surge across the state.
County public health departments recorded 9,018 new cases by Tuesday evening, with some still yet to report, bringing the total to 283,750 statewide. The previous record was set on Monday with 8,638 cases. Bay Area counties documented 470 new cases, for a total of 30,862.
California also recorded the third-highest daily count of deaths - 111 - on Tuesday. The Bay Area recorded eight deaths."
2020 ballot measures are mostly do-overs
DAN WALTERS, CalMatters: "Four months out from November’s election — and just three months until mail voting begins — outcomes of virtually all major California races are preordained, including a win by the Democratic presidential nominee, assumedly Joe Biden.
The big action will be 12 statewide ballot measures that may differ widely in subject matter, but have a common theme: do-over.
All but two of the measures would re-fight old battles, including the proposals most likely to grab the spotlight, Propositions 15 and 16."
Syringes are key to vaccine delivery. Trump is relying on two untested suppliers
LA Times's JENNIFER HABERKORN: "As the Trump administration races to buy hundreds of millions of syringes for what is likely to be an unprecedented COVID-19 immunization campaign, success depends heavily on two small medical supply companies with little track record of fulfilling government orders of that magnitude.
Retractable Technologies Inc., based in Little Elm, Texas, announced an $83.8-million government contract in May to provide an undisclosed number of syringes and needles for use with a COVID-19 vaccine. In dollar terms, the single order is double the company’s entire 2019 revenue, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Company officials recently warned of possible COVID-19-related supply disruptions due to the fact that 83% of Retractable’s products are made in China, but they also have told shareholders they are confident they can fill the large order."
UC names first Black president
The Chronicle's NANETTE ASIMOV: "A physician who recently stepped down as president of Ohio State University will become the University of California’s 21st president and its first Black leader, taking over the $37 billion system next month at a time of extraordinary upheaval and financial disarray because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Michael Drake, 69, who will earn $890,000, about the same as at Ohio State, has deep roots at UC and in California. He served for nine years as chancellor of UC Irvine until 2014, was a medical professor at UCSF — where he earned his medical degree specializing in ophthalmology — and served as UC’s vice president of health. Drake also took his undergraduate degree at Stanford.
“If you’re looking for someone with vision, you can’t go wrong with an ophthalmologist,” said Regents Chairman John Pérez, the first of many regents who praised the selection of Drake."
As racial issues move to forefront, SCOTUS shuttles them to back burner
The Chronicle's BOB EGELKO: "As police killings and public protests push racial issues to the forefront of the national debate, the U.S. Supreme Court is quietly shuttling questions of race to its back burner.
The leading example was the June 18 DACA ruling, in which President Trump’s attempt to cancel Barack Obama’s 2012 program allowing young undocumented immigrants to live and work in the United States was blocked by a 5-4 majority, on the grounds that the administration had failed to explain its reasons. In the lead opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts — joined by three of the court’s more liberal justices — said Trump’s past denigration of Mexican immigrants as “rapists” and “drug dealers” was irrelevant to the case.
The statements, mostly during the 2016 campaign, were “remote in time and made in unrelated contexts,” Roberts said, and were not uttered by the administration officials who actually ordered an end to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals in 2017. Only Justice Sonia Sotomayor disagreed, saying the insults showed an immigration viewpoint that was a “keystone of President Trump’s campaign and a policy priority of his administration” and should be considered by courts reviewing any renewed attempt to repeal DACA."
SCOTUS rules teachers in church schools are not protected by anti-discrimination laws
LA Times's DAVID G SAVAGE: "The Supreme Court on Wednesday restricted teachers who work at church-run schools from filing discrimination claims against their employers, ruling that the Constitution’s protection for religious liberty exempts church schools from state and federal anti-discrimination laws.
The justices, by a 7-2 vote, ruled that because two elementary school teachers at Catholic schools in Los Angeles County helped carry out the mission of teaching faith as part of their jobs, the schools are free to hire and fire them without concern for anti-discrimination laws.
In the past, the Supreme Court has recognized an implied “ministerial exemption” that shields a church, synagogue or other religious bodies from being sued by priests, pastors and other ministers. The issue in the pair of cases from Southern California was whether that exemption extended more broadly to teachers in a church-run school whose primary duty was not necessarily religious instruction."
International students upended, unsure if they can continue US studies amid new federal rules
LA Times's NINA AGRAWAL/TIFFANY WONG/ELLIOT WAILOO: "Unlike many international students, Grace Wang of Claremont McKenna College opted against returning to Beijing and moved to a friend’s home in March when her campus switched to online classes and sent students home amid the coronavirus emergency. She felt it was best to stay in America.
But as Wang awaited news of the college’s fall reopening policies, her plans were further upended when federal officials announced new visa guidelines that prohibit international students from staying in the U.S. if they continue to take all of their courses online.
“If we go online, I don’t have a choice but to go back to China,” she said Tuesday."
SF schools unlikely to send all kids back full-time in August: 'It's an impossible task'
The Chronicle's JILL TUCKER: "It looks increasingly likely that few if any San Francisco students will be back full-time in classrooms this fall, but families won’t know for sure until the end of July, less than three weeks before the first day of school.
Reopening to all students will be virtually impossible by Aug. 17, given staffing and facilities challenges as well as shortfalls in funding to hire the necessary custodians and nurses and in critical supplies like soap and hand sanitizer, according to administrators and community members involved in the planning process.
San Francisco health officials have yet to release the public health guidelines for reopening, which will identify the conditions required to bring students back into school buildings. Other counties, including Santa Clara and Marin, have released theirs."
Stories of fear, hope, survival: Homelessness, the other pandemic
The Chronicle's KEVIN FAGAN: "For most of the 35,000 people who find themselves without a home on any given night in the Bay Area, the coronavirus crisis has been a gnarled mixture of blessing and fear.
More than 4,500 of the sickest and most vulnerable have been shepherded into hotel rooms or spots in temporary trailer parks, a significant upgrade from the streets or a shelter bed. Perennially crowded shelters have been thinned out for more physical spacing, making them safer and more livable. Handwashing and toilet stations have been installed near usual homeless haunts in the main cities.
But those are just flickers of fortune for a relative few. Shelters are closed to newcomers. The majority of the homeless are sleeping outside, either jammed together in chaotically crowded streets or hunkered down in RVs or tents away from the main downtowns."
Twins joined at the head are separated at Vatican pediatric hospital
AP: "Doctors at the Vatican’s pediatric hospital said Tuesday that they have successfully separated conjoined twins whose skulls were fused back to back, in an exceedingly rare surgery for an equally rare congenital defect.
The twins, Ervina and Prefina Bangalo, were born June 29, 2018, in Mbaiki, Central African Republic, with their heads attached and sharing critical blood vessels around their brains. Such cases of conjoined twins occur once in every 2 million births or so.
The Bambino Gesu Pediatric Hospital, which is Vatican-owned but operates within the Italian public health system, brought the twins and their mother to Italy soon after their birth. The hospital said the toddlers were recovering well a month after their third and definitive separation surgery on June 5."
